Speech Bubbles - Thoughts?

[Leowilde]

I see your point, and I agree that more sense of chatter around you in the cities would be good, but I don't think chat bubbles is the way to go. It will look too childish and cartoony to fit with the rest of this game.

[Eldaena]

I'm not against the bubbles if they are toggleable. =D

[Zantetsuken]

They did work nicely with Vagrant Story though....

But (No Thanks) for bubbles in FFXIV.

[Delmontyb]

I'd be all for it, but only from players in game, it helps to see who said what sometime without having to take my eyes off what's going on in the world to look at the chat log.

I agree with the toggle option, and would like to see it for /say and /party chat.

[Eekiki]

I don't care for the idea of speech bubbles, however I do believe the text box that appears when you speak to an NPC needs to be larger.

I also wouldn't mind it being your traditional Final Fantasy blue with white border.

[Misha]

I'd be all for it, but only from players in game, it helps to see who said what sometime without having to take my eyes off what's going on in the world to look at the chat log.

I agree with the toggle option, and would like to see it for /say and /party chat.

Yep definitely... actually listed bubbles for chat in another thread hehe players only of course... or maybe npc's in the future that shout stuff at you as you past :P It's very FF ^^ Make it classic background blue too xD

[ShinChuck]

Speech Bubbles ruin immersion - because A TEXT LOG doesn't? We're talking six of one thing, a half-dozen of another here, IMO.

I'd love to have a speech bubble *option*. To me, actually seeing a "voice" come from the character is better for immersion than having to glance away from them and down at a little log in the corner. Done right, they could make it easier to follow as well, too often my chat gets lost in the logs.

Still, I think "immersion" is an awful argument against them, because neither solution - buried in a text log or bubbles/text boxes by the speaker - is particularly immersive.

[Cendres]

Yeah I like speech bubbles and I think it fits the game just fine, but personally I don't like seeing floaty things in the air all the time so if they could be on a toggle and it seems SE like things that toggle now I'm all for it.

edit: Oh that's been mentioned already, sorry.

[Leowilde]

and it seems SE like things that toggle now

Hehehe.

[Sephr]

Talking about immersion in this context is utterly redundant. That's like saying "I'm not able to open menus in real life and examine what i'm carrying in a list, so it shouldn't be there".
Sooner or later you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that it's a game, and you can't live in it.

That said, it's even more redundant considering just about everything that gets added has some form of toggle because of whinegasms (which is not a bad thing at all).

Perhaps it would be better as someone said to have a FFXIII-like system, whereby if NPCs wanted to get your attention (this was the main reason i was thinking about it, with the PS3 release and an influx of new players they'll need better ways of guiding people where to go next, and an NPC who interacts with the char and gives context to their movements would be a good way of doing it) text could appear in a corner and perhaps their position would flash on the map. Might be a good alternative method of interaction.

I'm personally still keen for bubbles of some variety (they dont have to be giant fat speech bubbles, that's just a term I'm using for above-head text), I think there's a disconnect currently between character and player in the eyes the other people playing. In other MMOs the idea of looking in the log for what people have said is just not considered (unless its guild chat etc) because its much easier and more obvious to look at on-screen information.

Chat Bubbles = Screen Clutter. Keep your shitty convos off my screen.

As I said before, I think it would have to be optional, and also customisable in that perhaps you'd only see bubbles for party members/linkshell members etc.

Hard, right?

(Not being overly defensive here, but I think it's worth at least trying to be constructive about the topic)